John Dudley: NCAA needs to do away with a bunch more arcane rules

Making fun of the NCAA for creating and enforcing stupid rules has become so easy there's almost no sport in it anymore.

It's like pointing out that Justin Bieber's next date needs to be with the Supernanny.

But maybe, finally, mercifully, the overlords of college athletics are beginning to hear the voices of reason who have been screaming at them for decades.

Or maybe they simply fear the outcome of this week's vote on whether to unionize by student-athletes at Northwestern.

In any case, NCAA president Mark Emmert, in a move nearly as unprecedented as it was blunt, ridiculed his organization's rules governing how much food schools can feed their student athletes, including what kind of spreads -- specifically, none -- they could offer on bagels as training-table snacks.

That the NCAA should have ever bothered to slog its way into the business of restricting and legislating meals is absurd. Emmert said as much last week, dismissing the idea that such rules were created to ensure schools wouldn't gain a recruiting advantage by offering, say, a better caliber of cream cheese.

It will be easy to dismiss the move as the NCAA's pandering to critics who would love to see a class-action lawsuit that might ultimately force college sports into a pay-for-play model.

Indeed, the NCAA seems prepared, perhaps as early as this year, to close some of the gaps between scholarships and the actual cost of attendance for athletes and address concerns over health coverage for catastrophic injuries.

While they're at it, Emmert and his people should tweak a few more of the NCAA's more draconian rules:

- It's time to do away with extra-benefits violations that cause hopeless confusion among conferences and schools.

Last year, a West Coast Conference school self-reported a member of its women's golf team for -- gasp! -- washing her car with the university's water and hose.

- The fact that college coaches can break contracts and, in most cases, move freely from job to job while recruits are bound to commitment letters suggests that college sports are all about the adults and not the kids.

In cases where a coach voluntarily leaves, at minimum any recruit who hasn't yet practiced on campus should be released to transfer without penalty.

- In a similar vein, the NCAA's early deadline for men's basketball players to declare for the NBA draft is unfair to the point of being punitive, a self-serving move that allows coaches to avoid waiting on decisions while denying players to change their minds and return to school to continue their, um, educations.

Athletes aren't the only targets of silly NCAA policies. Earlier this month, a Wall Street Journal reporter covering a men's Elite Eight tournament game at Madison Square Garden in New York City had a mug with illustrations of cats confiscated because it violated the NCAA's branding rules.

His cup was returned after the game, with the stipulation that he not take it to the Final Four the next weekend.

As for common sense? Unfortunately, where the NCAA is concerned, that, all too often, remains MIA.